Dr. Michaela Merryday, associate professor of art, will host a free presentation \u201cWestward Route 66 Takes Its Way: Ed Ruscha and the Promised Land,\u201d on Nov. 2 at 6:30 p.m. in Room 151 of Holcombe-Norwood Hall.<\/p>\n
The event, free and open to the public, is made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to the Mississippi Humanities Council.<\/p>\n
Merryday was selected by the Delta State University Department of Art as the 2015 Mississippi Humanities Council award recipient.<\/p>\n
Her current work examines the role of culture in promoting sustainability, which is the subject of her publication, “Westward the Course of Route 66 Takes Its Way: Ed Ruscha and the Promised Land.”<\/p>\n
In 1956, Ruscha set out on Route 66 from Oklahoma City to Los Angeles. The sites he encountered along the road eventually became the basis for his book, \u201cTwenty-six Gasoline Stations,\u201d and reappeared in paintings such as \u201cStandard Station,\u201d \u201cHotel,\u201d \u201cNorms, La Cienega, On Fire\u201d and the large Hollywood sign.<\/p>\n
The Hollywood sign not only marks the final destination, but also stands for the dreams and promises that have beckoned thousands to California.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to suggest that Ruscha\u2019s work presents a contemporary version of the myth of Manifest Destiny given visual form in the landscapes of 19th<\/sup> century painters such as Thomas Cole, Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze or Albert Bierstadt,\u201d said Merryday. \u201cBierstadt presented the West to viewers weary of the trials of the Civil War as a beautiful and benevolent land, a paradise where one could start over again.\u201d<\/p>\n Merryday\u00a0completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Vienna, Austria, and earned a doctorate in art history from Florida State University. Her research also focuses on contemporary public and political art practices.<\/p>\n Most recently, she\u00a0contributed a feminist reading of Marie Hull to Bruce Levingston\u2019s monograph \u201cBright Fields: The Mastery of Marie Hull,\u201d which was published this year by The University Press of Mississippi.<\/p>\n For more information, contact the Department of Art at 662-846-4720.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dr. Michaela Merryday, associate professor of art, will host a free presentation \u201cWestward Route 66 Takes Its Way: Ed Ruscha and the Promised Land,\u201d on Nov. 2 at 6:30 p.m….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":144,"featured_media":68152,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,14,296],"tags":[1446,96,40],"class_list":["post-68151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-academics","category-college-of-arts-and-sciences","category-facultystaff","tag-college-of-art","tag-department-of-art","tag-faculty"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/news-and-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/news-and-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/news-and-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/news-and-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/144"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/news-and-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68151"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/news-and-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68159,"href":"https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/news-and-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68151\/revisions\/68159"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/news-and-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/news-and-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/news-and-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deltastate.edu\/news-and-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}